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Card fraud grows online

The following article was published this morning. Although card fraud online is growing, ID Theft is falling.

Card fraud grows online

But ID theft falls...
By John Oates
Published Tuesday 8th November 2005 10:35 GMT

Fraudulent use of credit cards online is increasing because Chip and PIN technology makes other forms of fraud more difficult.

The six-monthly survey from Apacs, the UK payments association, found that card-not-present fraud, which covers internet, mail order and telephone scams jumped nearly a third compared to the same period last year.

In the period January to June 2004 card-not-present scams netted fraudsters £70.2m but in the first half of this year losses grew to £90.6m. The internet part of this fraud grew five per cent to £58m.

But despite the growth in card-not-present frauds total card losses fell 13 per cent to £219.4m. ID theft on card accounts fell 16 per cent from £19.1m to £16.1m.

Apacs also carried out research into consumer attitudes to security and found one in four online shoppers not checking whether sites are secure or not. Almost half of women and half of 16 to 24 year olds do not know what 'phishing' is. Apacs is starting a marketing campaign to show punters how to protect their cards.

A spokeswoman at Apacs, said: "The latest online fraud losses are comparatively low considering the huge number of transactions now being carried out online and it is clear that fraudsters are having more success targeting cards than online bank accounts - so our campaign is focused on cardholders."

Apacs will publicise its top ten tips including: keep details safe in the real world - because that's where most internet fraudsters get them from - check your browser is up-to-date with security patches and only use secure websites.

Tickbox carried out the research for Apacs and spoke to 2,104 online shoppers.